Biling Computer Software Ltd.
 
In March 2000, I have got a chance to work in a local computer software developing company - Biling Computer CO., Ltd., owned and run by a private, farmer-turned entrepreneur. Apparently he has little knowledge of computer and almost none of programming. Ironically, there were some 15 to 20 guys working for him, all of them of the lowest class (except me) within the IT industry.
 
I met the owner during an exhibition. After 6 months (Sept. 1999 - Febr. 2000) of job hunting, I was quite despaired and instead of working for someone I wanted to cooperate with them. So I tried calling several companies and among them was Biling, a company located at the Suzhu River and the Sichuan road, about half an hour time to take a subway.
 
They have three rooms. One room is supposedly to be designated to the web developing team where I would be a leader, four or five persons in all and the other for the traditional software programmers. Biling has been designing management software for the autoparts dealers, distributors and resellers. They used FoxFro to design the interface and the databases. Biling was also using a Novell Netware network management software to manage data and files across the small computer network of ca 10 PCs.
 
While the boss admired my qualifications he did not express it in terms of economics. First I was interested in working with him as a partner, but he would rather have me as his member. Considering my situation then, I thought it was not a bad idea to have a try. Although he offered a humble salary of about 1/8 of my previous man, I would think after two weeks he will raise that to a level of my expectation, when he saw my performance.
 
I was wrong, as I have been always overestimating the good heart of the employers. When he was delighted by my performance as all others, he was just not moved. Everything remained the same, incl. my salary, so after a little thinking I decided to go as the two weeks' time gave me enough insight into a small IT firm. There were no other reasons to stay there longer.
 
Another reasons for quitting this company was the fact that the entrepreneur occupied a too large office space. Only two weeks after my joining the company moved to a office complex where they rented 2 rooms and one of them was reserved to the owner and by far the best designed and decorated. I was not happy with such a boss - particularly when the company was still very small, and engineering and technical staff need more space. The administrative persons took another room while they didn't have as many as we programmers. I hate those companies which didn't respect the technical staff. In my opinion, they are the core of the company and shall be treated well. Under such an atmosphere I couldn't work happily.
 
The next day I told the boss to leave, and he paid me a little cash and we said good bye.